Mearsies Heili Bounces Back

by Sherwood Smith

  But here he was at last. I sat alone while he took out one of his charts and spread it onto the table. “This is where we lie,” he said, touching the harbor, beautifully illustrated with soundings, each of the tiny islands off the mouth of the river drawn in. His finger swept eastward. “And here is Chwahirsland.” He jabbed his thumb down on that huge land, bordered by high mountains raised centuries ago. “As for Mearsies Heili, no one knows anything, so far. It might be too early for news to come the long way. What I do know is that Puddlenose Sherwood is a prisoner in Narad.”

  “If the news from home isn’t here, then how did you find out?”

  Captain Heraford looked uneasy. “Same method we found out about you, when you were imprisoned there. A letter, delivered right here.” He smacked the table. “We almost did not go the first time. Thought it some kind of trap. Except that the note was written in Mearsiean, and we couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to trap us by such a strange method. Why not just attack us on the ocean?”

  “Okay.” Now I understood more about our first rescue. I also got it that he hadn’t wanted to tell us everything.

  And I realized he still wasn’t telling us everything. Like, why so interested in Mearsieans in the first place, being as they lived and sailed here halfway around the world from MH? But I decided there were more important things to get straight, before I started nosing into his personal business.

  So, back to my personal business. “Ugh! I wonder if that has anything to do with me?” And when he looked a question, I said, “I got slammed by magic to Tser Mearsies. I ran away, and here I am, trying to get home. But if Puddlenose got clinked, we gotta get him out first!”

  “I just got back from making some raids. Stirring up a little trouble among the transports forming to shift warriors to Mearsies Heili to hold it for Kwenz.” Captain Heraford grinned. “I want to go back to that when we’ve finished our business. I figure our immediate plan has to be to prevent that transport convoy from setting sail, any way we can.”

  I nodded. Then I thought about Shnit’s horrible castle. Fear cramped my insides, though I was determined not to show it. “Um. Where is Shnit? Is he there snailing about?”

  “No, word on the sea puts him in Mearsies Heili overseeing his brother’s establishment of control.”

  I jumped to my feet. “Then that’s perfect! We can get in and rescue Puddlenose before the head slime gets back. Then go home and I find Clair. And she and I will figure out how to boot Kwenz out.”

  Captain Heraford gazed at me, smiling, his grownup thoughts clear enough. “Cherene Jennet, I know that Clair regards you as her friend. More like a sister. That might mean, to many, that she would expect you to keep yourself safe.”

  I frowned at him, more in question—right now—than in affront. “I should hide until MH is safe? But then who is going to get the clods out of the kingdom?”

  “I am working toward that for starters,” Captain Heraford said, that wry tone back. I did not understand it, but as he was helping us, I didn’t let it bother me. “But I do not expect to do much on my own. I will find allies. Some of my own pi—ah, free trader allies.”

  Ahah, I thought. You were a pirate! We knew it!

  “I suspect Ka Nos of Seram Aru will be on the lookout for mage allies. We might find others.”

  “You mean grownups. Park the kiddies—we’re supposed to play and have fun, while the grownups take care of everything?” Now the anger started sparking, though I did try to fight it.

  Captain Heraford said gently, “In many parts of the world that would be considered the responsible action.”

  I scowled at him, but he did not look away, or apologize. He was too serious for that.

  I fought my temper back down below a boil and thought hard. He was waiting for me to say something—so I whatever I said should be smarter than a bunch of insults against busybody adults. Even though I was thinking them.

  So what should I say?

  Everything he’d said sounded quite reasonable—from the grownup point of view. I knew that Clair listened to some grownups, but I seldom trusted them, and even less seldom liked them. Captain Heraford was one of the exceptions.

  I wound my legs tightly round the bench legs as I struggled with emotions and thoughts. Captain Heraford was serious in having this planning talk with me right now, instead of chasing off the little kiddie and telling me to go play princess—

  Princess—

  I said, “When Clair picked me to be her princess I thought that meant to be like her sidekick. Just, you know, be her best friend. Then she asked me to learn some magic. Just in case. So I did.”

  I paused, scowling at my hands as way too many thoughts skittered round inside my head like a bunch of boiling beetles.

  “Go on,” said the Captain.

  I sighed. “I don’t know how to put it, but I was supposed to give a tentacle now and then. Help, I mean—that’s how we call helping each other. So anyway if she had to go somewhere, I’d park my duff on the throne for morning court, and at least try to solve easy problems, or tell people to come back later. Visit the provinces if she needed me to. And of course keep an eye out for Jilo, who’s been sent by Kwenz to spy on us, of late. We thought, to find our hi—uh, something. But maybe it had to do with this plan of theirs.”

  The Captain waited patiently. The inward-slanting stern windows were blue with the fading light, the water below quietly slap-slapping against the hull. Feet thumped back and forth on the deck overhead. In the distance, lightning flared again, sudden and blue-white as another storm moved south of the city.

  I drew in a deep breath of the fresh, salt-tangy air. “Everybody—the Auknuges, Kwenz—everybody seems to think a kid on the throne is like a sign to come in and grab anything they want. But how to keep ’em out besides our patrols? We don’t have any army guys, or any of that floob. So Clair had a lot of magic thingies. Things the grownups don’t know about.”

  “Are you saying she has wards up that will rid the kingdom of enemies?”

  I sighed. “I know she has some wards and protections. In case of certain things. So I have to find her. And then she will know what to do. Even though she’s a kid.” As Captain Heraford began to protest, I said quickly, “First we rescue Puddlenose.”

  “We?”

  “I have black hair. All Chwahir have black hair, or super-dooper dark brown hair, on account of not being able to get out and mix with other people for centuries and centuries. I can disguise as an errand boy—since girls aren’t allowed to travel or do anything, there, I’ll find him.”

  Captain Heraford frowned at me. “I’m trying not to see a twelve-year-old child,” he admitted, and raised a hand as I began to protest. “And I remember myself at your age. As long as Shnit is not in residence, and I go with you, and a couple of my better boarders, we’ll stay with your plan.”

  I bit back a You can’t tell me what to do. He was taking me to Puddlenose, he was fighting the bad guys, and he’d listened to my plan. Any adulterooni could be ignored.

  o0o

  Within a couple days of sailing we met up with some other ships, the captain’s allies. By then the kids on board had fitted me into a watch, which I really liked. This time I shared one of the tiny cabins with the girl. She had the bunk, and I got a hammock, which I loved.

  The girl was about fifteen. She was the one who rowed the boat. She practiced sword-fighting with me, and a couple of boys who loved any kind of joke, which meant a lot of laughing as we worked. The rest of the crew were grownups of various ages, a couple of women and the rest men. They drilled for fighting even more than they had on my first journey. My action station, since my magic was blocked, was in the tops, holding a firepot for the bow-and-arrow crew; I’d wrap oil-soaked string round an arrow and set it afire before handing it to one of the shooters.

  That was for battle. Captain Heraford made it plain that battle against the huge number of Chwahir was a last resort. Though most scoffed, when we actually re
ached the border—and you could feel the heavy magical barrier—and saw the millions of masts sticking like pins toward the gray, low skyline, everyone sobered up. There were far too many of them to attack head on.

  Captain Heraford waited for a thunder-squall for us to cruise under as cover. One had been reported slowly boiling out of the west. We pulled back beyond the horizon and he signaled for the other captains to come aboard.

  A couple of them looked like pirates, we kids noted, watching from the mastheads as we ate our midday meal. We weren’t invited to the strategy session, but after the captains departed again, Captain Heraford called me down to his cabin.

  “Here are the details,” he said. “I’m going to take a party with me in the longboat to accompany you to the capital. What they are going to do is take boats among the enemy, while covered by the storm, and do a lot of damage. We can join as soon as we have Puddlenose safely out of there.”

  I nodded fervently.

  And so it went.

  We all dressed in black duds (me in borrowed stuff from their storage trunks), and the grownups loaded up with weapons. We took the longboat with its sea-colored sail and pitched and tossed for shore in the middle of the night, as the storm system moved slowly in. The little inlet was one Puddlenose had shown the captain, at the mouth of a bitter mountain stream, not much good to anyone. The water was polluted from coal ash and the residue of Shnit’s horrible border protection spells. A ways out we took down mast and sail and rowed in, arriving before dawn. Then Captain Heraford had us turn the boat upside down and stay under it all during the long, bleak Chwahir day. It rained and thundered intermittently, the occasional sun filtering through such heavy magical wards it was more like a winter sun, distant and weak.

  Being here again was like having a blanket drop over your mind, soggy with bad feelings. I’d forgotten that. All my brave determination seemed to leak out as the long day passed. Along with a pack of bread-and-cheese sandwiches and a jug of water, the captain and his party had brought some cards to play games during the long day, as they watched and slept by turns. I lay at one end, peering under the crack they’d carefully made. The beach was strewn with the ruins of boats and ships—never cleaned up. When I asked, Captain Heraford said that some were enemies, some Chwahir. How depressing! And how like Shnit, not to care. I was glad to fall asleep and nap most of the day away.

  But the detritus hid us, and as soon as night fell, we were off, sneaking toward Shnit’s horrible city, which is a long snaky thing—walled and guarded—along a river. The north end, which is where the royal castle lies, isn’t all that far from the estuary where we’d landed, but we had to duck and watch for the constant patrols. Shnit had hundreds and hundreds of men (and it’s only men) on ceaseless patrol just to guard him. From his own people as well as any enemy who’d be crazy enough to ever set foot in Chwahirsland.

  Ahem, like us.

  But we had reason.

  I think I’ve mentioned that Clair got this idea that the reason why the Chwahir guards act so slow and cloddish and make a lot of mistakes is because they exist under heavy enchantment, meant to keep them from thinking for themselves. They follow orders.

  We sure saw proof of it here as we followed a patrol in at the watch change, just before midnight. The marching squad never looked back. We’d run along the wall, directly under the sentries, who never looked straight down, just out at the bleak, barren horizon.

  It was tougher getting through the gate. We popped through, one by one, bending low, ducked immediately to one side, and then crouched in a group behind the gate-keeper’s storage shed, as the new patrol marched out of a building, across the courtyard, through the gate, and then away.

  Now it was time for the gate to close. The captain motioned to us to pick up some of the jumble of stuff we found—baskets, a rope or two—besides the gate-keepers’ shed, and walk in a head-lowered single file line across the court, just like Shnit’s servants walk.

  And no one paid us the least heed.

  The miasma of malevolent magic made my head began to ache, and my shoulder blades itch as if I were being watched, but I remembered that was the way one normally felt in this horrible place. If you can call that normal. It was for the Chwahir, which is why it was so hard to hate the everyday ones. But I had noooooo problem hating, despising, loathing, not to mention abhorring, abominating, detesting, and execrating (I learned that word just for Shnit) their leaders.

  We entered a servants’ door, and then we had to make our way upstairs in that bleak, cold stone castle to where Shnit lived, in the highest tower.

  From the looks of things, he was still gone. Even so, my heart was kathumping, and not from the climb, when at last we reached the top, having had to duck or turn our backs or just freeze in place when other servants or the endless soldiers walked by. If you froze and looked away, they didn’t seem to see you—but of course you never knew if someone might be under a compulsion to be searching for anything or anyone out of place.

  The captain’s orders were to attack guards only as a last resort. That would leave a trail for Shnit to follow—plus, even if we didn’t kill them, Shnit would. We all remembered what Puddlenose had told us. If Shnit thought his guards (enchanted as they were) hadn’t done their job, he would have them all executed. So it was important that, afterward, every guard report that nothing had been out of the ordinary. And Shnit wouldn’t be able to prove how anyone had gotten in or out, except by magic—and only he’d be to blame, since no one else was allowed to use magic.

  One by one the crew peeled off at important intersections to keep watch, until only the captain and I were left. We kept peeking into rooms, until at last we found Puddlenose, in a room filled with fancy furniture of the sort he usually hated. His door was not locked. A very bad sign.

  We slipped in, and I ran to the bed. Through the slit window the torchlight on the other towers cast faint light. The face on the pillow was shaped familiar: square, brown hair.

  “Pssst, Puddlenose!” I whispered, shaking his shoulder. “Wake up!”

  He snorted, then sat up. “Who is that?”

  “It’s CJ and Captain Heraford! We’re here to rescue you!”

  “What are you doing in my room?” Puddlenose asked in a weirdly flat voice. “Get out!”

  “Come on, Puddlenose! Snap out of it!”

  “I must call the guards,” he said, his tone almost robot-like but the words sharp and nasty—utterly unlike his real self. “I must call the guards to protect me from intruders.”

  “He’s under a spell,” I said to the captain.

  “What are you talking about, you stupid girl?” Puddlenose said. “Anyone in this room but Uncle and His Majesty is an enemy ... I must strike out against the enemy—”

  “Ish! That’s Shnit you’re defending,” I honked, hopping up and down. As if sheer outrage could break the spell!

  Puddlenose’s answer was to take a swing at me—or where I’d been standing. He was so slow his fist missed me by a yard. But I stumbled over a footstool when I ducked back, and thus couldn’t stop Puddlenose, who lunged at the door.

  Captain Heraford tripped him, and though Puddlenose started struggling wildly, he wrestled him down. Since the Captain wasn’t all that tall or big for a man, and Puddlenose was already getting tall before he stopped growing, there isn’t much difference between their sizes. Thus the captain was having a tough time because he didn’t want to hurt Puddlenose, who was striking out blindly, as hard as he could. Only the magic interfered with his abilities.

  So they rolled about, the captain getting a hand around Puddlenose’s mouth to keep him from bellowing, and keeping it there despite a lot of kicking and pounding.

  Think, think, I told myself as I skittered out of the way Spell—compulsion.

  Of course—he had to be wearing something to force it onto him. Shnit never would have gotten Puddlenose to sit still for spells to be layered on. That didn’t mean there weren’t some spells loaded on as well,
but it was more likely that Shnit had enchanted the spells onto some object, which was far easier. Once he managed to get the thing onto Puddlenose, wham! The spells would hit him like math homework on Friday.

  The Captain had gotten Puddlenose in a head-lock, but Puddlenose still struggled on. “Quick,” he grunted. “Is there anything we can do? Or am I going to have to hit him?”

  I groaned, eying Puddlenose, who was wearing an honest-to-fashion night shirt. A frilly one! He would hate that.

  But of course it would amuse Shnit to force him into his opposite.

  ... which means—”Jewelry,” I said. Puddlenose had told us he couldn’t stand jewelry—and indeed, when we raided Lord Snord’s, he hadn’t take any for himself. Just the sword and hat and boots.

  The captain flung Puddlenose over onto his stomach, and sat on his back, knees pinning his elbows, and with one hand mashed his face into the carpet so he couldn’t bellow.

  We checked his hands, his wrists. Nothing. No necklace—but when Puddlenose tried to struggle again, and the captain gripped his arm, he gave a soft exclamation.

  He shifted grip on Puddlenose, bent one arm up behind him, then pointed with his chin at that arm. “Use my knife.”

  A knife hilt gleamed coldly at the top of the captain’s boot. I pulled it out, grabbed the material of Puddlenose’s nightshirt as he writhed and fought, and cut open the sleeve—and there was a golden snake-thing wrapped round Puddlenose’s upper arm.

  I touched it—and fell back as icy-cold nastiness streamed through me.

  “Knife,” the captain grunted, wrenching Puddlenose’s arm up behind him in an effort to keep him still.

  “No—” I protested.

  “Not to stab. Pry the thing loose,” the Captain said—grunting between words as Puddlenose did his best to fling him off.